Bonfires

Tomorrow is Bonfire Night in the UK. It's a tradition that travelled here to Newfoundland with those livyers / settlers from the southern parts of England.

Bonfire Night was celebrated regularly in St. John's until some got just a little too big. It was subsequently banned within city limits.



They continued to set blasty boughs ablaze in communities 'out around the bay' for many, many years. Still do, in fact. I attended one in the backyard of the some folks living on Little Bay Islands a number of years ago. Exhilarating!

Click here for the locations of Bonfire Night interviews and photographs collected as part of Newfoundland's Intangible Heritage Inventory. And here for another article about the revival of what was a dying tradition.

Maybe you'd like to attend this year's Bonfire Night in Marystown? Or in Holyrood? I'm gonna try and get to this one in Conception Bay South!

Mat Night & Spooky Viewing

Because I'm originally from Quebec I still refer to the night before Halloween as Mat Night. And well do I remember how excited some kids, particularly boys, got on this day. In the schoolyard, at recess and lunch time, there were many whispered consultations as plans and plots were hatched for the evening's mischief; egging cars, TP-ing trees, or placing poo in brown paper bags on people's doorsteps and then blowing the bag up with fire crackers, ugh!

I never participated myself. No, really. But I was always excited and full of anticipation on this night. Kind of like Christmas Eve...but spoooooky!

As an adult I still find Mat Night particularly exciting. It's got all the quality of Halloween night going for it but I don't have to hand out candy. So I can do whatever I want by way of soaking up the atmosphere.

On this Mat Night I plan on the following. If the weather is good, we'll go for a walk in our back woods around sunset. Then we'll be in the kitchen carving pumpkins and roasting seeds. And then, candles lit, spooky lights on, we'll be settling on the couch to watch three special X-files episodes.

I mentioned before that we've been re-watching the X-files. Well, through our re-viewing we have watched every single episode...except for three. I skipped these because I consider them among the scariest and, naturally, wanted to save them for tonight. (I have another favourite classic scary and ghostly X-files episode, but I save that one for Christmas.)

So tonight's viewing will include first, a double header. "Squeeze" (Season 1, episode 3) and "Tooms" (Season 1, episode 21)



And then the classic 'Home' (Season 4, episode 2). Many agree this is one of the top 5 episodes of the series. And it features Newfoundland actor, Sebastian Spence!



Will I survive the night?